“Pay us $25 hour to be here.”
“Artists need good wages, not the $25/ hour CNZ has been putting forward for some time (it’s too too low for contractors that many artists are working and have to pay tax).”
these come from under the subheading Artists need to be paid fairly and recognised as professionals
and this subheading comes under the heading Leadership
and this leadership refers to the organisation never to be known as the King Charles III Arts Council
but I like these quotes and cite them here to show the diversity of opinion among artists
and arts organisations.
I cite them to show the difficulty faced by this organisation. I mean
they clearly and plainly contradict each other. And apart from drawing attention to
this contradiction
I can imagine no other reason for that organisation to cite them. We
must, I say we must be put in mind of this small discrepancy:
the document has two titles. In one it is for Arts Development in Aotearoa New Zealand. In
the other it is the Future of Arts Development in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is The Future for
Arts Development in the title for the pdf but the document itself has the title The Future of Arts
Development. …this difference might be like those breadcrumbs of QANON. Unless
the organisation wants it both ways. It wants to dictate the future as well as indicate it. It wants to
answer the question what will the future be for arts development in Aotearoa New Zealand with
the answer it has already given. The future for arts development in Aotearoa New Zealand is the future
of arts development in Aotearoa New Zealand. One title points to the future and the
other raises the question of that future. For asks what does the future hold. Of relegates it to the past
where it will have been. If it has been at all.
In this way of is a question of a future being of the arts. Except
that the problem is further complicated by the compound noun arts development. What does it mean?
The future of arts development may be the only way it can develop. To state the future of arts
development is to prescribe if it is to develop how it will develop. Whereas to state the future for
arts development is to project into the future what development there will be. There is still some
ambiguity.
The future for arts development may mean what use arts development will have. So the
question of the use of it will be raised. What’s the use of it? And does the document address in
any way that use?
Some of the quotes do, the quotes that the organisation scares us off with its raised eyebrows. They
do kind of. They, the quotes are not about arts development or its use but about the use
of arts. Imagine if the document were titled The Future for the Arts in Aotearoa
New Zealand. The quotes that talk about the use of arts make the arts out to be a form of
therapy. The use of the arts is for mental well being. What is the use of the arts? And then
what use does development for the arts have? What is the difference between that and
this, What use does development of the arts have? This question of the use of
development makes it clear that development serve the arts since it is the development
of the arts that is in question. It is the arts being developed. The other,
development for the arts applies something to the arts that it calls development but
which may be the opposite of development. Development is meant for the arts just
like the development of children is for them but has usually historically been
detrimental to them. In other words for means meant for and is well-meaning even
if in practice it causes maldevelopment. Just like that the organisation that
never will be called the King Charles III Arts Council means well. What it does
is another thing. It means well by producing a document for and of the develop-
ment of arts in Aotearoa New Zealand but this assumption undergirds it, that
the arts don’t so much need funding as development.
